By Kourosh Ziabari
Crossposted with CounterCurrents.org
James Tracy
American political commentator believes that the United States has been constantly allied with Al-Qaeda and supported it militarily and financially.
“Major media have recently had to acknowledge that US-NATO interests are aligned with Al Qaeda in Syria, of course overlooking the fact that the US and Sunni States also recruited and armed these soldiers of fortune. What the Obama administration has sought to do with the alleged murder of Bin Laden in May 2011 is to close the chapter on the old, villainous Al Qaeda and open a chapter on the new and friendly Al Qaeda. This narrative is slowly unfolding, while Americans are instructed on a different bogey to fear, which now appears to be homegrown terrorism,” he said in an exclusive interview with Iran Review.
Prof. James F. Tracy is the Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton , where he teaches courses on media history and the role of journalism in the public sphere. Tracy ‘s scholarly work and commentary on media and politics have appeared in numerous academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative media news and opinion outlets. He is editor of Democratic Communiqué, journal of the Union for Democratic Communications, an affiliate of Project Censored, and a regular contributor to GlobalResearch.ca. Tracy ‘s latest work assessing Western press coverage of US-NATO military ventures and the human costs of war appears in Censored 2013: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2011-2013 (Seven Stories Press, 2012).
Prof. Tracy took part in an interview with Iran Review to answer some questions regarding the influence of advocacy organizations on the U.S. government and the mutual relationship between these entities, the further limitation of civil liberties and individual freedoms in the United States, the challenges ahead of progressive, alternative journalism in the United States, Western mainstream media’s coverage of Iran and Syria affairs and the prospect of U.S. military expeditions in the Middle East.
Q: What do you think about the role of influential American think tanks and public diplomacy and advocacy organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations or the National Endowment for Democracy in creating unrest and instability in the countries which are opposed to the United States policies? Do you find traces of their footsteps in the ongoing violence in Syria ? Do they have plans to destabilize Iran so as to realize their mischievous objective of regime change in Tehran ?
A: One can contend that the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Endowment for Democracy are much more than advocacy organizations. The question suggests the popular view that Western states and especially the United States are above such organizations in terms of decision making power and responsiveness to the populations they purportedly serve.
This is the idealization of a transcendent governing apparatus upheld in public opinion and touted in Western mainstream media. This is the myth the CFR specifically perpetuates about itself and the liberal state. In fact, the CFR is a branch of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and it has more or less dictated US foreign policy from within entities such as the US State Department since before World War Two.
This is not to say that every member of the CFR is involved in such maneuvers. Some are in the organization because they’re flattered to be asked and they see it as prestigious and fashionable, or they wish to network with other influential figures. Yet it is no mistake that membership is exclusive and participants all occupy strategic positions of power in major global corporations, in academe and the media, and in government, and thus can be mobilized to exert their influence as the CFR inner circle desires. They also openly share in the ideology of weakening the nation state and privileging global-regional and international bodies, such as the European Union and the United Nations.
It is through such organizations that they can get their policies enacted with little if any interference from the common people or their representatives at the national level. The CFR’s interests and activities, alongside the interests supported by the major philanthropic foundations such as the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundations, and the Gates Foundation, are demonstrable manifestations of the deep state that truly runs the world, has priorities that differ greatly from the bulk of humanity, and has sought to exert itself since the 1920s.
The “Arab Spring” appears to be largely a maneuver of organizations such as the CFR and NED. This was evident from the onset with the high degree of Western media exposure afforded the fairly modest demonstrations 2011 in Tahrir Square that preceded Mubarak’s ouster by the Central Intelligence Agency. The same media outlets unquestioningly covered the Western and Sunni-backed deployment of Al Qaeda mercenary forces and NATO airpower against the most modern and socially progressive state on the African continent under the Obama administration’s “Responsibility to Protect” cover. A central bank was reportedly created in the back of a mercenary pickup truck. This was a colossal war crime that Western public opinion is left largely in the dark about. It also underscored liberal-progressive hypocrisy and credulousness in the US , evident in the pronouncements of public figures such as Juan Cole and Amy Goodman, who led the cheering section for Libya ‘s destruction. If the Bush administration successfully vanquished the probable leader of the African Union those on the Left would have been in a huff. When one of their purported own oversees such a campaign it’s not only condoned but applauded, much like the “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia by Clinton .
As many of your readers are likely aware, Libya is significant because some of the same mercenary forces recruited by US intelligence and Sunni states that were employed there are now deployed in Syria . Like Libya , Syria is also a fairly modern state that is not hostile to the West but is regarded as being autonomous, particularly in its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. It is also seen as a strategic threat to Israel in terms of Iran , and so must be dismantled before a more concerted campaign against Iran is to take place. I’m inclined to think that those determining policy for the Obama administration want compliant fundamentalist regimes installed throughout the Middle East . This will be disastrous to overall security in the region but I don’t believe that’s their goal. War is much more profitable and has much greater potential than peace for those who wish to exert control over resources.
Q: In one of your articles, you argue that the United States has become a police state, with such restrictive legislations and programs which the government has put into effect to limit the citizens’ personal freedoms and different types of civil liberties, such as the Sedition Act of 1798 which criminalizes the publication of “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government and governmental officials. Would you please elaborate more on your notion of the United States becoming a police state?
A: I believe this was “The Paranoid Style of American Governance,” where I pointed out that the laws, policies, and organizational structure of the US government, how its exaggerated concern over surveillance and security is arrayed against the American people. The situation is comparable to how an increasingly delusional paranoid might approach human relationships s/he is involved in. As a result of the 1996 Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism Act following the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing and the 2001 PATRIOT Act enacted after September 11, 2001 many of the civil liberties Americans have been guaranteed under the Constitution have been stolen, never to return.
Citizens cannot expect to be secure in their persons and papers. We are subjected to humiliating warrantless searches at transportation facilities. As a result of a string of legislation capped off by President Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act of December 2011 the government now reserves the right to jail or murder citizens on political grounds. There is little if any recourse because our political representation has to a large degree been bought off by private interests. The US increasingly looks like a totalitarian state and is one major event away from fully resembling the Soviet Union or an Eastern Bloc state circa 1970. The extent of the rollback in civil liberties is very overdone because a majority of Americans are ill-informed, politically unsophisticated, and in many instances even functionally illiterate. Thus they are unaware of the police state’s accelerated formation since the mid-1990s and unprepared to contest it. A combined regime of poor public education and the stultifying effects of mass media and culture have dumbed the American public down to the extent that its republic has been taken right out from underneath its nose.
Q: It’s widely believed that the United States, as its leaders claim, is a “beacon of freedom” since the mass media are allowed to publish every critical material at will, even if they threaten the national security, in such cases of war with another nation. Is this widely-accepted belief true? Don’t the mass media face any restriction or impediment by the government to censor certain stories or withhold from the public sensitive information?
A: The major, agenda-setting US news media—USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and their broadcast and cablecast amplifiers—that the small strata of semi-politically adept and literate citizens rely on for information are all controlled by interests that are overall supportive of the US police state and US-NATO foreign policy. To return to your initial question, many of the owners or top editors and journalists are also CFR members. Together they perform a central propagandistic function of the state through selective reportage of issues and events, omission of key information, and heavy reliance on “official” government or corporate sources.
Such a set of procedures is worse than outright falsehoods because a falsehood can be disproved and a journalist or news organization called out on the carpet. However, by owning most of the newsgathering and distribution outlets, by using official sources and employing careful editing procedures such media retain credibility in the public mind. In the Soviet Union much of the citizenry knew that by reading Pravda they were being fed outright lies so they learned to “read between the lines” to interpret what was really going on. That requires a degree of political sophistication that is beyond most Americans.
The government and major news media are also being challenged by alternative news media and thus resort to a more blatant form of disinformation that jeopardizes their perceived trustworthiness, which is now at an all-time low. This is the case with their coverage of the US-NATO actions and Libya and Syria —specifically the fact that the US is allied with and actively supporting its alleged arch enemy Al Qaeda.
For over a year corporate media tried to cover this up when it was there in plain view. Alternative outlets reported otherwise and in the face of this mainstream media had to eventually relent and admit that the US is indeed supporting Al Qaeda.
As an example, one case involved a US-based alternative media outlet reporting on the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies collectively purchasing over one billion rounds of lethal, “hollow point” ammunition. Major media sought to assuage growing public concern on this by focusing on a single government agency’s (the Social Security Administration) purchase of 180,000 rounds of such ammunition, asserting that it was for target practice. This was absolute propaganda likely pitched to these outlets by covert government sources. It’s fairly common knowledge among American gun enthusiasts that “full metal jacket” ammo is used on the range because it’s far less expensive than hollow point and performs the same function. Nevertheless, the 180,000 SSA story was widely circulated, performing the intended propaganda function, mainly through conscious omission of the most important information that alternative media honestly chose to highlight.
Another argument that I need to make in light of the world wide expanse of news and information now available on the Internet is that the US citizenry doesn’t need to rely primarily on USA Today or New York Times editors for what it is exposed to. This remains the case so long as the Internet remains free from government or corporate encroachment and regulation. In this regard there is a wealth of information for those who have the time, discernment, and initiative to seek it out and become informed. Investigative journalists and commentators have much to draw on in terms of analyzing and explaining the meaning and significance of issues and events. This is essentially what newspapers and journals did before the application of scientific objectivity to journalism and the pretentious separation of news from analysis and opinion.
Q: What challenges do the independent, progressive journalists of the United States face today? In one of your articles, you had criticized some of the progressive media for failing to give coverage to important topics such as the truth about the 9/11 attacks. Would you please elaborate on that? In my view, the progressive media outlets such as CounterPunch or The Nation have to some extent broken apart the monopoly of the mainstream media and allowed the free flow of information while the mainstream media steadfastly try to suffocate the truth. Don’t you agree?
A: Independent progressive journalists often produce important investigative work on issues and events ignored by mainstream outlets. One example is the attention they’ve brought to bear on hydraulic “fracking” and its immense environmental destruction. They have also been helpful in raising awareness of the Bush-Cheney administration’s many crimes.
My main criticism with so-called progressive alternative news media is how they are usually tethered to philanthropic foundations and thus restricted in what their writers can comment and report on. They’re also strongly influenced by partisan politics. Democracy Now and The Nation, for example, regularly fell over themselves to interrogate and expose the Bush-Cheney administration’s abundant malfeasance. However, when the Obama regime continues and intensifies such policies, or unconstitutionally commits US troops to fight in Libya , such outlets are either close to silent or condone such measures. This is a double standard. Imagine if the Bush-Cheney cabal deposed the likely heir of the African Union. Left-liberals would have a variety of raucous criticisms. Obama does it and no eyebrows are raised. The case is even more evident with regard to the US-NATO support of mercenary armies terrorizing the Syrian population. In their partiality the progressive media are hypocritical in the extreme, and it’s difficult to have much faith or respect for them.
Another example of this is the collaboration between John Nichols, political correspondent at The Nation and libertarian Constitutional attorney Bruce Fein, who were both outspoken during the Bush administration on the case for impeachment. Nichols also wrote a very critical biography of Cheney. Fein is still calling for impeachment—this time of Obama. Nichols is nowhere to be found, even though Obama’s crimes are comparable to Bush-Cheney’s.
There are also several issues that require investigation and discussion that the left-progressive media won’t even acknowledge. 9/11 is certainly one. Others include the related phenomenon of false flag terror, and the United Nations’ Agenda 21. There’s abundant information on all of these phenomena, and independent activists and genuinely alternative news media have covered them—some in great depth. Progressive media won’t, and I believe this in part is due to their fear of being labeled “conspiracy theorists” by the thought police at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti-Defamation League, Media Matters for America , Think Progress—all of which are, perhaps not coincidentally, as dependent on foundation money as the very progressive journalists they patrol.
Such media’s failure to pursue 9/11 beyond government pronouncements resulted in the crucial delinking of 9/11 Truth from the antiwar movement, and in my view the antiwar movement’s consequent lack of real purpose and direction. It’s fairly safe to say that a majority of Americans, including those on the left, are generally trusting of government institutions and authority in general to the extent that they could scarcely imagine such institutions might be capable of an event like September 11. There is a naïve trust in entities they barely recognize or understand outside of fictionalized accounts, which speaks to the tremendous success of an educational and propaganda apparatus that conditions individuals to accept at face value the claims of authority figures.
As I’ve stated above, the progressive alternative media are capable of extreme hypocrisy. “Global warming,” or “climate change” is another case in point. Such outlets unquestioningly promote what amounts to a new religion and global taxation regime that the Left has bought into entirely. Raising legitimate questions is extreme heresy, equated with threatening the polar bears and coral reefs. The typical mantra is that human beings are the main culprits through their everyday activities. This is not to say that there is no problem of pollution linked to human consumption, and there could be reasonable modifications and programs for addressing such concerns. Yet the science purporting the existence of a “greenhouse effect” on environmental temperatures from carbon dioxide, alongside the dubious scientific endeavors of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, cannot stand up to serious scientific scrutiny yet is uncritically upheld by the left intelligentsia especially.
The progressive media promote this notion while ignoring deliberate efforts to alter the environment through weather modification and geoengineering that have been going on for several years now. That’s profoundly dishonest. Nor do such media interrogate the billions of dollars being pumped into the environmental movement each year through the philanthropic foundations. Nor is there any coverage of Agenda 21, which according to its own doctrine is a plan to radically alter social and economic relations in the name of “sustainability.” The more Americans find out about this, the more outraged they will be, but they won’t become aware of it through the progressive alternative media, who are enthusiastically on board with such plans whether they realize it or not.
Q: What role are the mainstream media in the West playing with regards to the crisis in Syria ? With the experience of NYT’s Judith Miller and her rabble-rousing prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, are the mass media repeating the same scenario to lay the groundwork for a military strike against Syria to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad?
A: The major news media have been attempting to make the Syria’s al-Assad government look as if it is oppressing its own population—for which it has no realistic motive—so that the Anglo-American alliance can mercilessly bomb the country and install a puppet regime like it has done in Libya. This is a frame-up that Western media are complicit in carrying out. As with 9/11, much of the American public will have difficulty fathoming the idea that its government is supporting and allied with Al Qaeda mercenaries to terrorize and kill Syrian citizens, yet that’s what is happening. Syria is strategic in a geopolitical sense because of its proximity to Israel , and the West realizes that any potential attack on Iran must be preceded by a malleable regime in Syria . For over one year none of this was reported in US news media. When Hillary Clinton admitted as much in February 2012 on BBC and CBS, as reported in such alternative outlets as Global Research and Infowars, the corporate media backtracked and obscured her remarks, and the information was subsequently suppressed.
Yet major media have recently had to acknowledge that US-NATO interests are aligned with Al Qaeda in Syria , of course overlooking the fact that the US and Sunni States also recruited and armed these soldiers of fortune. What the Obama administration has sought to do with the alleged murder of Bin Laden in May 2011 is to close the chapter on the old, villainous Al Qaeda and open a chapter on the new and friendly Al Qaeda. This narrative is slowly unfolding, while Americans are instructed on a different bogey to fear, which now appears to be “homegrown terrorism.”
The dynamic between the public, media and US government is also different than it was in 2003. Before the US could attack Afghanistan and Iraq the Bush administration realized it needed a public rationale for such. A key rule in management is to give your subordinates a reason for why you’re enacting a new rule or policy. September 11 and the constructed threat of Iraq ‘s “weapons of mass destruction” provided this rationale to placate the public. Despite its high-handed duplicity, the Bush-Cheney regime actually went through the proper avenues and received Congressional approval to go to war.
The Obama administration has done nothing of the sort with regard to the use of US forces in Libya last year. Instead of being more forthright in terms of legislative protocols and aggression, Obama and his handlers chose to wage war and subvert societies and governments in more covert ways, such as what has and continues to occur in Libya , Syria , and Iran . In my view, one of the few things that is worse than Bush’s flagrant and arrogant use of military power is Obama’s hypocrisy—claiming the “responsibility to protect” through allegedly humanitarian military intervention while illegally committing US troops abroad and presiding over tremendous violence.
The US public and Congress—and especially the progressive-left—are happy with their rock star-in-chief. Some also fear being labeled racists if they really criticize Obama’s policies. There’s virtually no opposition I can detect by the allegedly principled and peace-loving left in the US . It’s perhaps ironic that one of the legacies of the US ‘s tragic history of race relations is that, much like waving the flag of anti-Semitism, the actually existing memory of racial oppression can be opportunistically mobilized to actually stifle honest political debate.
As I mentioned in a recent piece for Global Research, if Obama carried out the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq with the appropriate R2P platitudes to his base the liberal establishment would have rolled over. Obama is very useful to larger, global power interests because what he symbolizes—liberal ideals and the civil rights struggle—allows him to play on and manipulate the public’s good will and enact or continue policies at home and abroad that white politicians would be highly scrutinized for. A Romney-Ryan administration would actually energize the progressive-left in the US and potentially provide for a more vibrant political discourse. Four years of the Obama administration proves that the left is far more devoted to circling the wagons and the spirit of partisanship than to the values it claims to uphold. If the left media were honest to its principles it would have provided extensive coverage of the Non-Aligned Movement August conference in Tehran to further highlight the Obama administration’s hypocrisy. The coverage was close-to non-existent.
Q: What do you think about the Western media’s coverage of the Iran affairs? In my own interpretation, they have practically taken up arms against Iranian people, because they are intentionally portraying Iran in such a way that every external observer thinks that Iran is a crisis-hit, dilapidated, uncivilized and uncultured country. The Western audience is totally unaware of Iran ‘s culture, history and civilization, and this is a direct result of mainstream media’s lopsided coverage of Iran . What’s your take on that?
A: That’s an accurate assessment. This is because the Western media’s coverage of Iran is guided to a large degree by their heavy reliance on official sources, such as those at the US State Department, NATO, or within the Obama administration itself. The coverage is perpetuated by the ethnocentrism and narrow views of those within the US and European media as well. Iranian officials’ statements and views are generally absent in such news media. This is of course intentional on the behalf of such outlets and their owners.
The American public has been incrementally conditioned for an attack on Iran since 2002 when the country was identified as part of the “axis of evil” by George W. Bush. The US youth are increasingly weaned on a psychic diet of video games where there are clear distinctions of good and evil. If a country and its people can be objectified and thereby dehumanized—as is done in the conditioning of our youth in general society and the military—their destruction can be more efficiently carried out and witnessed with little if any objection. The “clash of civilizations” is a coordinated process for public consumption.
A related factor in this regard is of course Israel . It’s very difficult to overestimate the country’s power over the US government, and major US media are no doubt sensitive to Israel ‘s propaganda line that Iran poses an existential threat to the Zionist state. Israel ‘s public relations arm, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is extremely powerful in shaping Western media’s representation and thereby public opinion of Middle East affairs and Iran specifically.
One could make the argument that were it not for such influence Iran would be regarded as merely a country pursuing its right to produce nuclear power as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; that it does not aspire to the status of a regional or global nuclear power that Israel has in fact been for many years through its relationship as a client state of the US. It may at this point be reasonable to question who the client actually is.
Q: We’re just passed the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and several questions regarding this horrendous incident remain unanswered; questions such as whether or not it was a false flag operation, whether or not Israel’s Mossad was involved in it, whether or not the U.S. government had foreknowledge of it, etc. What do you think about the official account given of the 9/11 attacks? Do you believe in the skeptical assumptions which authors such as Christopher Bollyn or David Ray Griffin have put forward?
A: In an email exchange I had with the late financial commentator Bob Chapman a few years ago I brought up the close-to-non-existent discussion about 9/11 there was in the academy among colleagues. He responded, “In exposing the truth those who make their livings by going along with the accepted view of history will always dismiss you as a radical. That is because of their own intellectual dishonesty.” It’s important that those of us who have the privilege of being salaried intellectuals with certain protections like tenure point to how the US government’s official account of the September 11 events cannot withstand even modest scrutiny, and are only accepted by an unthinking and fearful American public served by a willfully unthinking and often manipulative mass media and political leadership.
For the public to accept the ostensible causes of 9/11 they must partake in something akin to what George Orwell conceived of in his classic 1984 as doublethink. This more or less involves negotiating two observations or ideas at the same time while putting one’s reason and morality in abeyance. In Freudian terms the reality is too horrible to be dealt with and is therefore repressed.
An alternate reality—that which is provided by US government public relations personnel, a majority of the intelligentsia on the left and right, and amplified by major media, is offered as an alternate reality. I can’t imagine how this was not given careful consideration prior to 9/11’s execution, despite the patent sloppiness of the operation itself.
Adolf Hitler and his henchmen recognized how a population was susceptible to “the big lie” because most people could never personally imagine committing a crime of such proportions. This is because apart from the imaginary set of social relations provided by television the social circle of most individuals does not extend beyond family, close friends, the supermarket checkout clerk and the mailman. They never come into contact with the people who run the world, so an event of this magnitude is beyond them, and the strategic planning that defies national boundaries or routine time horizons is quite literally otherworldly to them. If the news media and academy are incapable of serious inquiry, which after eleven years is obviously the case, this greatly contributes to public confusion and disbelief.
September 11 is a frightening example of how a specific rendering of an event becomes a part the public consciousness and memory. This was not so much done through persuasion or the manufacture of consent but rather through a form of shock therapy and mass trauma. It was certainly on a scale far surpassing the American political assassinations of the 1960s or the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing because of its scale and the fact that it was witnessed by much of the country and world in real time. The images of the towers and bin Laden were then repeated ad nauseam to burn the imagery and terror in to the public mind. This was an extremely impressive propaganda campaign accentuated by the fact that Americans have never been victimized in that way before and are used to being on the side of conquest.
I don’t believe there are any serious intellectuals who can defend the state-sanctioned version of what transpired on September 11, although this is what our school children are being taught, so it’s another chapter of a fatally compromised history. Even members of the 9/11 Commission, a body that never would have existed were it not for the victims’ families, have questioned their own conclusions. Osama bin Laden was in seriously poor health at the time of the events. A large and courageous body of professionals, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, have provided compelling evidence that the World Trade Center towers could not have collapsed because of burning jet fuel. Moreover, World Trade Center Building 7 wasn’t even hit by a plane and similarly collapsed eight hours later.
I incorporate materials and discussions on 9/11 in classes I teach addressing journalism and public opinion because it’s the most important event of the past fifty years, and probably US corporate journalism’s greatest failure. Regardless of how one interprets the causes and assesses the evidence, in addition to the initial loss of 3,000 innocents, it was something from which the American public lost important civil liberties and several million people have been killed, injured and traumatized unnecessarily.
Q: The United States and its European allies have imposed backbreaking economic sanctions against Iran which are affecting the daily life of ordinary citizens. Their sanctions and war threats come while there’s no compelling evidence showing that Iran is working toward developing nuclear weapons. What’s your idea about the hostility of the Western states against Iran in general, and the economic sanctions in particular?
Q: Iran is a strong, independent, and largely self-sufficient state, a signatory to the NPT, and is pursuing the safe and peaceful development of nuclear power provided for under that treaty. It has not attacked another country in 300 years; the war it fought against Iraq in the 1980s was from a defensive posture. Thus Iran ‘s role in the region contrasts sharply with Israel , and this is especially the case if one is to take into consideration Israel ‘s probable possession of a nuclear arsenal.
Yet Israel is also something of a pawn in a broader geopolitical power play. Israel ‘s people themselves don’t want a war with Iran , only its leadership does. Even the US military don’t want such a war. And if the American people were similarly provided with ample contemporary and historical information—which they are cheated out of by media and frequently poor educational institutions and curricula—a majority would not want to go to war with Iran .
In my view what is playing out is at least partially attributable to NATO’s plan to encircle and challenge Russia and China . On the “grand chessboard” of the Anglo-American elite Iran is a strategic and resource-rich prize. In their view it’s too independent for its own good. This is the case right down to its largely autonomous banking system, and this makes it especially impervious to Western economic and political control. A country or alliance that is independent is dangerous. It could set an example of self-determination for other countries that cannot be permitted.
Q: And finally, do you believe that the United States is capable of continuing its military expeditions around the world and keeping up with its policy of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries? It’s said that throughout the past 3 centuries, the United States has been involved in more than 50 wars, either directly or indirectly. Will this militaristic and expansionistic approach toward the other countries survive in long run?
A: Since World War II especially the US military has been used by larger forces to harness and divvy up the world’s resources. If the US and NATO were no longer there another military or military alliance would likely take their place and enforce the policies of the major transnational cartels—finance, agriculture, chemicals/pharmaceuticals, armaments, energy, and media/telecommunications.
The US won’t be able to sustain its military even in the near term because of the mountain of debt it presently has, and the even greater debt the country is being saddled with by the major investment banks, such as those with their debts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, who will receive their pound of flesh long before the American people.
Given this, we have the fact that the Federal Reserve can’t buy America ‘s debt forever which will eventually result in debtor nations throwing in the towel and US dollar losing its reserve currency status. Thereafter it will be a challenge to fund much of anything. Most Americans have little understanding of what’s coming in this regard and they are going to be very upset and bewildered when such events come to pass.
Things could look like Greece or Spain in very short order. In such an event the US imperial project might be absorbed into an international “peacekeeping” or “humanitarian” military force, which already exists under UN auspices. What is also already in the works is the increased automation of warfare, of which armed drones are presently the most obvious example. Such devices are already in use to police the American “homeland” and terrorize the inhabitants of other lands.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist and media correspondent. In 2010, he received the national medal of Superior Iranian Youth from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his media activities. He writes for Global Research, Tehran Times, Iran Review and other publications across the world. His articles and interviews have been translated in 10 languages.
